Addictive website

[Redwolf]

This site is more addictive than chocolate, I swear to God:

http://www.mentalfloss.com/amazingfactg ... 041#scroll

I can't stop pressing the button...except for when I think of a new fact to add to their database.

Trivial Pursuit junkies...I've found the motherlode!

Redwolf

[dubhlinn]

I'm getting a headache trying to remember all this wonderful trivia for the next quiz night....good find Red.
Slan,
D.

[Redwolf]

I'm getting a headache trying to remember all this wonderful trivia for the next quiz night....good find Red.
Slan,
D.

I've contributed several facts for inclusion (some about Irish, and some about poodles)...it will be interesting to see if they get in.

The site really is addictive...I find myself compulsively hitting "hit me again" over and over, just to see what new tidbit it will come up with.

Redwolf

[Lambchop]

I am not going to look.

[Redwolf]

I am not going to look.

Oh, c'mon! You know you want to!

Redwolf

[Denny]

we'll wait for ya...

[brewerpaul]

Cool site, but for some reason I have a strong urge to make up some "facts" to post there...

[Redwolf]

Cool site, but for some reason I have a strong urge to make up some "facts" to post there...

I think the facts are verified before they put them on the site. Mental Floss is generally pretty careful about what they put out there.

Redwolf

[Redwolf]

Here are the facts I've submitted, in case anyone happens to see them fly by:

"The Irish language has no words for "yes" or "no." To answer a question in Irish with "yes," you must restate the verb used in the question in its positive form. To answer "no," you must restate the verb used in the question in its negative form."

"Many languages assign grammatical genders to nouns. When a noun identifies a living creature, however, its grammatical gender doesn't always reflect the actual biological sex of the creature. For example, in the Irish language, the word for "girl" ("cailín") is grammatically masculine, and the word for "stallion" ("stail") is grammatically feminine.

"The Irish alphabet does not contain the letters j, k, q, v, w, x, y or z. In most cases, these sounds either don't exist in the Irish language or are covered by other consonants or consonant combinations. While you will occasionally see words using these letters today, they are invariably loan words from another language."

"Although they are often mistakenly associated with France and with a luxurious lifestyle, poodles were actually originally bred in Germany to hunt ducks. The oft-maligned "poodle cut" was designed by the hunters to protect the dog's body core and vulnerable areas such as joints, ear tips and tail tip from the frigid water while removing enough of the hair to make easier for the dog to swim."

"The original "standard" (large-sized) poodle was only modestly bigger than the "miniature" (medium-sized) poodle, averaging 17-18 inches, compared to the miniature's average of 13-15 inches (modern standard poodles often stand as tall as 24 inches). Thus it wasn't that the miniature was "miniaturized," but that the standard was "supersized"!"

"In addition to being used for duck hunting, poodles have also been used as herding dogs on German farms, as light draft animals for pulling carts to market, as jewel smugglers, and as truffle hunters."

"Poodles, and other curly-coated breeds (including the Portuguese Water Dog and the Hungarian Puli) do not have fur, but hair, such as humans have. The hair continues to grow for the life of the dog, just as human hair does, and must be cut regularly to prevent it from becoming a long, tangled mass."

Let me know if you happen to see any of them there!

Redwolf

[I.D.10-t]

Started dancing at age 11,



Chicago Golden Gloves Champ.

[dwest]

Irish Water Spaniels, what poodles want to be.

[Redwolf]

Irish Water Spaniels, what poodles want to be.

Ah, they're cousins. Both breeds almost certainly descend from the old European Water Dogge (along with the PWD and the Puli).

Redwolf

[dwest]

Irish Water Spaniels, what poodles want to be.

Ah, they're cousins. Both breeds almost certainly descend from the old European Water Dogge (along with the PWD and the Puli).

Redwolf

No telling where the Irisher came from. genetically they are further from poodles than suggested by their appearance. Their topknot is only shared with one other breed, Afghans.

[dubhlinn]

Speaking about Gaelic.....

"A lady lecturing recently on the Irish language drew attention to the fact (I mentioned it myself as long ago as 1925) that, while the average English speaker gets along with a mere 400 words, the Irish-speaking peasant uses 4000. Considering what most English speakers can achieve with their tiny fund of noises, it is a nice speculation to what extremity one would be reduced if one were locked up for a day with an Irish-speaking bore and bereft of all means of committing murder or suicide.
My point, however, is this. The 400/4000 ration is fallacious; 400/400000 would be more like it. There is scarcely a single word in the Irish (barring, possibly, Sasanach) that is simple and explicit. Apart from words with endless shades of cognate meaning, there are many with so complete a spectrum of graduated ambiguity that each of them can be made to express two directly contrary meanings, as well as a plethora of intermediate concepts that have no bearing on either. And all this strictly within the linguistic field. Superimpose on all that the miasma of ironic usage, poetic licence, oxymoron, plamás, Celtic evasion, Irish bullery and Paddy Whackery, and it a safe bet that you will find yourself very far from home. Here is an example copied from Dinneen and from more authentic sources known only to my little self:
Cur, g. curtha and cuirthe, m.-act of putting, sending, sowing, raining, discussing, burying, vomiting, hammering into the ground, throwing through the air, rejecting, shooting, the setting or clamp in a rick of turf, selling, addressing, the crown of cast-iron buttons which have been made bright by contact with cliff-faces, the stench of congealing badger's suet, the luminance of glue-lice, a noise made in an empty house by an unauthorised person, a heron's boil, a leprachaun's denture, a sheep-biscuit, the act of inflating hare's offal with a bicycle pump, a leak in a spirit level, the whine of a sewage farm windmill, a corncrake's clapper, the scum on the eye of a senile ram, a dustman's dumpling, a beetle's faggot, the act of loading every rift with ore, a dumb man's curse, a blasket, a 'kur', a fiddler's occupational disease, a fairy godmother's father, a hawk's vertigo, the art of predicting past events, a wooden coat, a custard-mincer, a blue-bottle's 'farm', a gravy flask, a timber-mine, a toy craw, a porridge-mill, a fair-day donnybrook with nothing barred, a stoat's stomach-pump, a broken-
But what is the use? One could go on and on without reaching anywhere in particular.
Your paltry English speaker apprehends sea-going craft through the infantile cognition which merely distinguishes the small from the big. If it's small, it's a boat, and if it's big it's a ship. In his great book An tOileánach, however, the uneducated Tomás Ó Criomhthain uses, perhaps, a dozen words to convey the concept of varying super-marinity - árthrach long, soitheach, bád, naomhóg, bád raice, galbhád, púcán and whatever you are having yourself.
The plight of the English speaker with his wretched box of 400 vocal beads may be imagined when I say that a really good Irish speaker would blurt out the whole 400 in one cosmic grunt. In Donegal there are native speakers who know so many million words that it is a matter of pride with them never to use the same word twice in a life-time. Their life (not to say their language) becomes very complex at the century mark; but there you are."

Flann O'Brian.

Slan,
D.

[I.D.10-t]

If it's small, it's a boat, and if it's big it's a ship.

Umm, I thought boats are fresh water, ships are salt water.